There are, on the market, all manner of kit homes that can be ordered and delivered, ready for assembly. They range from little more than a shed with a window to sprawling mansions. There are log home kits, timber frame kits, steel building kits, and the list goes on. I’m not going to get into all the options here, because the general idea is the same for all of them: everything you need to build your house, and presumably some kind of instructions, to get a home built quickly. These homes are not portable once they’ve been built, unless they are very small and on skids.

As a builder, I believe that in some cases I could save money by assembling my own kit, and doing as much prep work as possible before the materials arrive on the build site. In other cases I’d simply never be able to get my costs as low as what the factories offer. That’s not necessarily a good sign — it can simply mean the factory has access to cheaper, lower quality materials than I can buy.

Because there is so much variety, and because they’re not so much portable as they are ‘packaged,’ I’m not scoring these. But I figured if I was going to discuss modular, container, and tent homes, I should talk about kits, too, because they’re not much different, in that a lot of the work is done before the materials arrive on site, and the home arrives ‘assembly required’. In terms of a quick setup, I can frame a small house in a week without help, so I believe I can completely build a small kit home in a month, give or take; that includes all the interior finishes, wiring, plumbing, etc.

Biggest pro: Streamlined building process

Biggest con: Not technically portable

Most unique feature: Beats me.

For the remainder of this entry I’m just going to post a few images to show the wide variety of kit homes a person can buy.